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As soon as someone starts talking about business processes, most of us roll our eyes upwards and start to think about something else – anything but business processes! After all, it's much more fun just to get on and do something, no matter whether it's the right or wrong thing to be doing at that time, than to be poring over process diagrams.

Imagine the gateway to Hell – hot, noisy and so slippery you feel you may lose your footing and fall into the flames at any moment. That was my first impression of the process of making glass bottles. Of course, it wasn’t quite as slippery as that but the rest still stands.

In my last article, I emphasised the importance of long-term or strategic planning to make sure that everything we do drives our business towards our vision. The trouble is strategic plans can be very daunting. The strategic goals act as way points toward our vision, showing us the general direction in which we should be moving, but they don't tell us what we should be doing on a day-to-day basis. That's where short-term planning comes in.

The simple answer is because we can't manage time – it happens at a constant rate in our everyday world. All we can do is manage what we do in the time we have available. That's why we should think about task management and not time management. You may think I'm splitting hairs but there is a fundamental concept at work here and that is: if we do the right things at the right times, we will get far more done and make better use of time.

Profit leaks within organisations across the UK are proving a huge cause for concern. Many organisations don’t have the visibility to identify inefficiencies within their operations, despite the fact there are significant savings to be made for those who can “plug the leaks”.